Do We Need a Princess Bride Remake?

Carol Kane and Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride | 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

In a film industry where remakes come along as fast as original films, you have to wonder if we should just let sleeping dogs lie. When I heard last fall that a remake of The Princess Bride is in the works, all I could think was, there’s just no way they can even come close to the magic of the original film, released in 1987.

It’s been 25 years since director Rob Reiner had to leave the set during Billy Crystal’s scenes because he was laughing so hard he felt nauseated. Can anyone do justice to this beloved cult classic? Who knows, but director Jason Reitman is willing to give it a go. The character of Westley, played by Cary Elwes in the original, is set to be played by Paul Rudd. Mindy Kaling, a.k.a. Kelly on The Office, will play the princess, played by Robin Wright Penn in the original. Patton Oswalt and Nick Kroll are onboard, as well.

Not everyone is enthused about a remake. “I hope I’m dead before that happens,” Mandy Patinkin, who played the swashbuckling Spaniard Inigo Montoya, told Entertainment Weekly. Maybe he’ll unleash some Homeland agents on them. No release or production date has been announced.

How do you feel about this remake? Are you a fan of the original movie?

UPDATE, Jan. 23, 2012: I received a note from Connor Adams Sheets, a reporter with the International Business Times, who said that rumors of a Princess Bride remake are totally false!

“I did some research and got to the bottom of this topic and found that there are no plans in the pipeline for such a revisiting of the classic movie,” says Connor. For more info, read Connor’s story here.

Jane Boursaw is the founder and editor-in-chief of Reel Life With Jane. Her credits include hundreds of print and online publications, including The New York Times, People Magazine, Variety, Moviefone, TV Squad and more. Follow her on Twitter at @reellifejane.

This ranks right up there with the advent of reality shows–except these aren’t SCABS doing it to us this time, is it? This and the remake of Footloose (John Lithgow isn’t even dead yet!) mark the demise of creative energies in the Hollywood-based film industry. There are plenty of older classics out there that deserve remakes–but might actually require some, oh, what’s that word?–creative energy to produce!

So true. And I sort of wish I hadn’t seen the Footloose remake, although I had to review it for my syndication partners. Remakes of such classic films like Footloose and The Princess Bride are a travesty.

This sounds like a really bad idea. Much as I like Paul Rudd, I can’t see him pulling this off. I’m not an “Office” watcher, so I know nothing about Mindy. It seems they are going for laughs, the easy slapstick kind. The original is still a classic comedy, one I watched with my kids and will show to my grandkids too.

[…] I posted yesterday about a possible remake of The Princess Bride after seeing it announced on the Reel Life with Jane site, the consensus was a unified shout of “Inconceivable!” Commenters on the post […]

People should really learn how to make original stories rather than remaking good old movies like this one. It destroys our childhood memories and the new versions are not even amusing. Most remakes are second rate and mediocre at best.